Another Star Trek Parody

A few months ago I mentioned a fan film I'd done, though I never posted the link, so I guess it's time.

Some folks here may have first seen it through Dennis Bailey's old site around 2004 (I think), where the only link was for a long time.

I know it's crude, and the sound's bad, but it was a fun 5 months putting it together. Despite several credited modelers and other friends, it's a one-man production that modified some existing models downloaded from the internet. I cannot take credit for the ship and bridge. It took me about another 3 months to get the courage to post it at Dennis' place. Remarkably, within 2 weeks the art department guys at Star Trek: Enterprise saw it and commented, which was more than I'd ever hoped for, and still thrills me.

YouTube's compression scheme messed up the timing in some scenes, and completely ruined my end credits.

CAUTION: Mature themes. No dirty words or naughty bits, but sexual situations are there (it's Kirk, after all). I DO NOT consider it safe for work nor for viewing around small children.

This is an unlisted link, but should work. Please advise if it doesn't.

Thanks, it had its origins around 2002 as a 2 minute audio file I'd made with the basic Kirk/7 exchanges. The voice clips all came from the old Star Trek in Sound & Vision site. Then one day I realized I had the ship, the bridge, and some DS9 character figures and thought I'd try to expand on it. I ordered at least one music cd and the sound effects cd to make things sound authentic.

Haggis and tatties said:

Tell me they made the second one?

Click to expand...

Thanks, and no, I never did because I didn't have enough voice clips for a second story. I was trying to make the thing look like a real episode, and after doing the end titles thought I should add a fake preview, which was another week of work. The preview concept started because I wanted to see that final scene with the cube blowing the hell out of the Enterprise, and then staged everything else to build up to it.

Whatever you decide, Barbreader, is fine. I'd originally made it just to get the urge out of my system, it didn't occcur to me that others might want to see it until later.

There were changes in character design, eventually resulting in colors taken from actor photographs, in mid-production. I was in the process of re-rendering the early scenes when I was suddenly stopped after a new game program caused an address conflict which made the animation program crash in a blue screen of death. That was the status when released.

Eventually it will get a Headline at some time when nothing new is being released to compete with it for attention. By that time I hope to (1) have watched it for better classification and (2) extract a jpeg or two from you to brighten the listing! I have a feeling there are going to be A LOT of new releases over the next two or three months, though. PM me for my e-mail address to send me the jpegs!

The 320x280 size of the video makes a screenshot pretty low quality, though I still have some of the original project files and could probably do larger re-renders of some scenes. I did that once for a Flickr account, but they were all from the fake preview (which featured my own corridor set) and I've forgotten my login there.

Edit: Never mind, memory is better than I thought. The bridge scene might work.

I sure didn't do it for money or fame. When I released snippets from it, someone criticized it for not being state of the art graphics. I mean, wtf! I'm one guy with one machine, with low end software, working in his bedroom, with no formal training in 3d animation or even a film course.

I'd first posted it at Dennis Bailey's old site, and one of the ongoing topics at the time was Starship Exeter, so you might have seen it there. A few years later I saw my film mentioned in an online directory. And someone else used to have it on YouTube after finding my original link. This is the first time I've put the whole thing on YT.

I was checking my files yesterday and found old set background plates I'd made so I could reduce render time for some of the characters. I tried to avoid full set shots unless character shadows were falling on the walls or there was character and camera movement. I don't remember how many shots were "faked" but one was the Sulu's fly gag, with Spock on the background plate behind him.
If anyone doubts the authenticity, I can do screenshots of some of the 3d setups.

I didn't build the bridge, but I closed up the ceiling and added Spock's viewer and a "working" turbolift, which originally had been just a flat non-opening door.